DEEPER DIVE INTO PRACTICE OF PANDO FUNDING

Hello! This is a Pando Funding deep dive; one of several concepts where we dig deeper into a critical aspect of Pando Funding. To explore why we believe it matters and to share what we’ve learned while leading the New Capitalism Project, a US-based system change network to transform the economic system so that it works for all people and the planet. These deeper dives are offered as tools to help you adapt Pando Funding to your context – to animate Pando Funding as a shared, living practice rather than a fixed model.    

Learning TO FUEL ADAPTIVE STRATEGY

Complex systems don’t hold still. They don’t wait for our reports and analysis. They shift as we engage them. And yesterday’s assumptions may no longer hold. Navigating this reality requires constant sensing, creative “next moves,” and the ability to adapt quickly. A system change network is uniquely suited for this kind of engagement: it can bridge multiple perspectives, diverse strategies, and turbo-charge collective capacity to act where single organizations cannot.

Yet the very qualities that makes a system change network powerful can be blunted by familiar habits—our need to road-map everything up front, delineate rigid plans, succumb to top-down funding decisions, treat evaluation as a scorecard. Pando Funding seeks something different: learning and adaptation baked into every layer of how the network works and how the capital moves.

What makes a Pando network adaptive:

  • Iteration over convergence. The network doesn’t chase one perfect plan. It embraces uncertainty as creative fuel—testing multiple bets through clusters, surfacing surprises, and course-correcting together.

  • Invests in shared sense-making. Reflection isn’t an after-action report activity. It’s a standing practice where members pool diverse signals, compare hunches, and frame the “best next move” in real time.

  • Keeps capital in the feedback loop. Decision rights over pooled funds sit with the people doing the work—and learning from it. When insights surface, money can move quickly rather than waiting for distant (disconnected) approval cycles.

How it can show up in practice:

  • Root enabling conditions. Long-term relationships, trust, and share purpose create the psychological safety and coherence needed to collaborate across boundaries and embrace emergent change.

  • Clustering. Small groups of members form around a strategic hunch, control a shared pot of funds, and iterate a living portfolio of projects—turning learning into action at network speed.

  • Nested learning. Insights flow from leaders in clusters to the wider network and back again, amplifying learning and ongoing experimentation without demanding uniformity.

  • Agile governance. Oversight bodies delegate resource allocation to those closest to the work while anchoring everyone to the network’s transformational vision—putting accountability and adaptation on the same team.

Pando Funding keeps a system change network responsive, imaginative, and makes systemic action possible.

Guideposts in Practice

Learning as Fuel for the New Capitalism Project (NCP)

The New Capitalism Project (NCP) was built with a clear hypothesis: that deep, sustained transformation of the economic system depends on strengthening the root enabling conditions among leaders working for change. Over time, this commitment evolved into the NCP Stack —a “learning flywheel” of interconnected assets that has become the engine of its adaptive strategy.

Here’s how the flywheel turns:

Seeing differently…
Bridging leaders who are working on diverse approaches to economic transformation requires them to ask new questions, confront what they don’t yet understand, and view their own work from new perspectives. This (dis)orientation is essential for genuine learning and for opening new possibilities.

…leads to making meaning together…
Through generative conversations, the network has co-created a holistic vision for economic transformation. This collective meaning-making reorients the group, helping members gain a more dimensional view of how the current economic system is failing and what transformation should look like.

…which helps clarify what matters now…
With stronger shared orientation, the network is better able to identify which parts of the current system need attention, what barriers are most relevant now, and where experimentation is most needed. It sharpens focus and guides strategic choices.

…and supports clusters of collaborative action….
With clarity for what matters and alignment for how to move, members are more willing to experiment—even amid uncertainty. They become more attuned to emergent insights—and better equipped to let that learning shape what comes next.

Each turn of the flywheel strengthens the network and increases its capacity to act systemically. What began as dialogue has become infrastructure—a stack of shared assets, capacities, and strategies. This adaptive capacity has fueled NCP’s evolution from conversation to clustering—where groups within the network form around shared strategic aims and co-invest in portfolios of experiments. In this way, NCP is demonstrating how investing in learning—and treating it as both input and output—generates not just knowledge, but action. It doesn’t just make systems visible; it makes systems moves.

GUIDING QUESTION

Within your network today, where are the areas of genuine, shared uncertainty about how to shift the system? Rather than trying to “solve” this uncertainty, how can vibrant, active learning productively sustain that uncertainty so that it generates new possibilities for network members?

Each deep dive offers a guiding question, as a jumping off point for exploring a particular aspect of Pando Funding in your own work and context.